Abstract
Although the toughening of Calcium phosphate (CaP) scaffold by the addition of fiber has been well recognized, integrated mechanical, structural and functional considerations have been neglected in the design and fabrication of CaP scaffold implant. The emerging 3D printing provides a promising technique to construct CaP scaffold with precise size and elaborate microstructure. However, the most challenge is to extrude smoothly the CaP paste containing fibers for frequently-used extrusion-based 3D printing. In this study, frozen section and chemical dispersant (Pluronic F127, F127) were employed jointly to prepare non-aggregated polylactic-co-glycolic acid (PLGA) fibers. The injectability of CaP pastes with well dispersed PLGA fibers was more than 90% when the content of PLGA fibers was no more than 3 wt%. Meanwhile rheological property of CaP pastes with well dispersed fibers showed shear thinning, which were both beneficial to extrude CaP paste with well dispersed fibers for 3D printing. Moreover, these CaP scaffolds showed ductile fracture behavior due to the pullout and bridging effect of PLGA fibers. The cell proliferation and alkaline phosphatase (ALP) activity indicated that 3D printed CaP scaffold containing PLGA fibers possesses excellent biocompatibility and facilitate osteogenic differentiation ability. Thus, it was feasible to print CaP pastes with well dispersed PLGA fibers to construct toughening CaP scaffolds with the higher shape fidelity and complex structures, which had significant clinical potentials in osteoanagenesis due to their higher toughness and excellent biocompatibility.
Highlights
Calcium phosphate (CaP) scaffold has been widely used in the field of bone defect repair owing to its similarity to the inorganic components of bone tissue, which resulted in the favorable biocompatibility and osteoconductivity[1]
It was necessary to prepare non-aggregated polylactic-co-glycolic acid (PLGA) fibers firstly to ensure their well dispersion in CaP paste
The CaP-3%F scaffolds still kept about 80% of compressive stress after peak loading. These results indicated that the incorporation of PLGA fibers enhanced the load bearing capacity of CaP scaffolds by means of the improvement of toughness
Summary
Calcium phosphate (CaP) scaffold has been widely used in the field of bone defect repair owing to its similarity to the inorganic components of bone tissue, which resulted in the favorable biocompatibility and osteoconductivity[1]. Electrospun fibers are used to improve the mechanical properties of CaP scaffold dramatically due to their analogous architecture to the structure of extracellular matrix[6,7,8,9]. It is difficult to get the non-aggregated fibers for electrospun nonwoven fabric and oriented fiber due to the large ratio of length to diameter, which results in the intertwinement of fibers in CaP matrix. Some studies show that the mechanical properties of CaP scaffold can be influenced by the length and content of fibers, the dispersion of fiber in matrix, and interface between fiber and matrix[3,9,10,11,12]. Maenz et al confirm that the mechanical properties of CaP scaffold, for its Work of Fracture (WOF), increase significantly with the increasing length
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